Monday, December 31, 2012

2012's bad penny award :Tough, rigid, and not very bright

We have seen increasing evidence that the right can no longer hide who they serve - the rich.

The overwhelming majority of Americans want to see a more equitable proportion of taxes being paid by the richest 2%. This makes sense in the context of the drastic wealth and income inequality we have seen grow under Republican policies, where there has been a shift through tax policies and other special interest right wing legislation to the wealthy, creating an uneven playing field for most Americans.

The tea party are a bunch of old white simplistic economic illiterates who have failed to understand the correlation between economic growth and government. They are penny wise and pound foolish -- and not all that penny wise.


Republican administrations and conservative congressional majorities consistently have caused lower rates of economic growth, and explosive deficits. In 2010, the Republicans campaigned on jobs jobs jobs -- and then cut public sector jobs.  Silly conservative Americans! You thought they were talking about creating more jobs, not cutting them! NO! Instead of doing anything to generate more jobs, they continued attacking labor, and focused only on waging culture war on the nation. Now we have the 2012 election cycle, we have people turning out to turn out the Republicans for being obstructionist culture war obsessed bigots and racists and morons.

The Tea Party is at an all time low for approval ratings, down to an estimated third of their inflated peak numbers. They do however continue their hijacking of the fractured and imploding Republican party that would rather see the nation go over the fiscal cliff than let Congress do what they were elected to do - to serve the people, not the special interests of the wealthy for whom the Tea Party are little puppet stooges. The extremists may very well find themselves with control of the GOP, but it will be control of a dead elephant with no expectation of rebuilding as their angry old white men die off. Now we see a fracture occurring where American disapproves of the Tea Party, and instead of learning and adapting, something their ideology renders them incapable of doing, along with fact recognition, the Tea Party is further fracturing and obstructing the GOP.

Going further right is their problem, not a solution, but they would sooner die (and take the rest of us with them) than take a long hard look at what they have done or how badly their ideas have failed, and adjust their beliefs. For the right, change is the scary enemy. They prefer emotional thinking over rational thinking. The greatest threat to the GOP is from within; the greatest threat to the nation is from the GOP obstructionist and intransigent extremists.  We saw a respectable victory for sanity and a solid push back against the 2010 apathy.

The left which is the new center is not walking away this time from involvement post-election; there is no political subsidence.  The push for further gains in 2014, notably not only taking back the House in congress, but taking back legislatures and governor's chairs is on now by Americans for Americans rather than special interests.  And completely opposite to their intentions, the Tea Party in their extremism and obstinacy may be an unwitting and unwilling ally, by alienating even more people from their cause. The first of the 2012 Penigma 'our two cents' awards, in the category of the recognizing negative contributions for the year, goes to the Tea Partiers in the GOP generally, and specifically to John Boehner for his inability to lead successfully in the House as speaker.


Take our two cents worth of 2012 dishonorable mention, Tea Party, GOP, Boehner - you need the revenue, whether you are able to understand that or not.

 

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